Gentle Nutrition for Beginners
Once you’ve learned to make peace with food and reframe the inner diet voice, you may find yourself ready to implement Gentle Nutrition. Gentle nutrition allows both your body and brain knowledge to make food choices that honor what your body wants as well as your health. This includes following your body's hunger cues as well as what satisfies you. Gentle nutrition sits between following the diet rules and rebelling against diet rules - it's a neutral territory that allows for a natural balance of eating what your body and mind want AND what nourishes you.
A great first step to beginning gentle nutrition is to focus on the addition of foods (not removal). As a clinical dietitian, when a patient asks me what they should stop eating, I always reframe the conversation to what they should eat MORE of - which usually ends up being adding in more fruits and vegetables to each meal. For example, if you love a bowl of ice cream for dessert, why not add some berries? Another tip is to have a variety of foods available to you. This allows you to make a better decision using both the brain and body knowledge. Try having a variety of easy grab and go foods, comfort foods, staple food items. Going to the grocery store and reframing the way you grocery shop is a huge step in implementing gentle nutrition. Have a variety of colors, textures, and types of foods.
Something I noticed in my personal journey with intuitive eating was that in times of stress and sadness, I often found myself reaching for comfort foods, not really thinking about fruits and vegetables. When I look back at this with gentle nutrition in mind, I realize that with a mindset of “fruits and vegetables provide me with the energy and nutrients to help me through this stressful time” allowed me to incorporate more vegetables into my meal, without forgoing the comfort foods too. Gentle nutrition is the tenth and last principle of the intuitive eating framework. The reason it is the last principle is that it can’t be properly understood or followed until you’ve developed the inner wisdom to honor your body cues.
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